Overview:
OPINION
The Greens must have thought they’d hit the jackpot with Lidia Thorpe: a strident, militant leftist, a woman, and an “Indigenous”? If only she was gay or disabled, they’d have swept their intersectional bingo card clean.
Instead, it turns out to be very much a case of buyer’s regret, as the Greens hurriedly stamp out one “Lidiot” dumpster fire after another. Even for a party as toxic as the Greens — where everything from sexual harassment, rape, theft and drug abuse has embarrassed the party over the years —, Thorpe is proving quite the liability.
Leaving her infantile, attention-seeking aside, there has also been the matter of the senator shagging a former bikie boss at the same time she was also serving on a parliamentary law enforcement committee.
Adam Bandt‘s office has confirmed the Greens leader has met with Australian Federal Police to discuss Senator Lidia Thorpe’s undisclosed relationship with a former bikie boss.
Senator Thorpe admitted last month that she briefly dated the ex-head of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang in Victoria, Dean Martin, while also serving on parliament’s law enforcement committee.
She did not disclose that relationship to her party leader, despite warnings from her staff to do so.
Bandt tried to get away with pretending to “take action” by stripping Thorpe of a minor “leadership position”. But the matter clearly isn’t going to rest there.
Senator Thorpe also volunteered herself to be referred to parliament’s powerful privileges committee, which looks into potential code of conduct breaches.
The law enforcement committee sent a detailed response to the senate privileges committee about a week ago on its own inquiries […]
If the privileges committee rules that Senator Thorpe had failed to disclose a conflict of interest, she would likely face senate censure.
Then comes this splendid little tidbit:
One parliamentary insider told the ABC that this would be “new territory” for the privileges committee insofar as it has never had a similar matter raised with it.
Do you mean, senators don’t routinely make a habit of rooting bikies? Gosh.
But the Thorpe circus, and the associated headaches for the Greens’ leadership, just keep hooting madly along.
A cultural review of Senator Thorpe’s office by the Finance Department has been underway after a formal complaint was made to the Greens in June this year.
In it, a former staffer to Senator Thorpe complained that they believed there was a breach of workplace health and safety in the senator’s office.
That would relate to Thorpe abusing an elderly Aboriginal lady so badly that her victim had to consult the parliamentary nurse afterwards. Such a lovely piece of work.
Still, at least Thorpe had actually bothered showing up, that day. Because, surprise, surprise, she’s a bit work-shy, by all accounts.
The staffer said Senator Thorpe “rarely” attended the office, and that when she was asked to come in she would become “defensive and rude”.
“She is often missing and uncontactable, sometimes for days. This makes getting approvals for work incredibly difficult and at times impossible,” the staffer said in a complaint seen by the ABC.
“On more than one occasion she has completely disengaged because she is too overwhelmed and advised all staff not to contact her at all, until she advises otherwise.
ABC Australia
Nice to hear that our $211,000 (plus expenses) of tax money is going to such a hard-working public servant.